You don’t have to open your legs to get to the top – Myeni

SAA chairperson Dudu Myeni said women must strive harder to dispel the notion that they need to sleep with a man in order to secure a powerful position.

“There is a notion out there that when you are a woman, for you to ascend to a position of power or climb the ladder, you must have opened your legs somewhere.

“Black women must dispel the notion that there must be a bedroom first before you succeed. Success must not be defined by the bedroom. It must be defined by your capabilities.

“What can you do and what can you offer the company? I won’t be able to sleep at night if our roles as women were based on a man first sleeping with you.”

Myeni was speaking in an exclusive interview with News24 at the luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel in Umhlanga on Wednesday.

Myeni said, “Do you think that every powerful man slept his way to the top? We want a black female president. Is that president going to be labelled?”

Myeni said she had been attacked for speaking about transformation.

“People go as far as saying that I have a relationship with the president.

“People are starting to be personal and it means that there is something that they don’t want to lose. I don’t intend making anyone lose anything; my intention is to do what the government wants me to do.”

She said the attacks were so personal that people were starting to pry into her private life.

“People are going to the ends of the earth to try and ridicule me. They went as far as buying fake bank statements and saying that I have money banked in Europe and France, over R250m.

“Unfortunately I can’t go to Google and erase some of those things,” she said.